This invention relates to a system for the containment of potentially harmful vapor emissions. The invention is especially adapted for use with solvent cleaning systems for fabric articles such as apparel. More particularly, the invention concerns such solvent cleaning systems in which the cleaning of the articles is performed in one unit and the solvent-laden articles are transferred to a second unit for reclaiming of the solvent from the articles.
Solvent cleaning systems for fabrics, commonly known as dry-cleaning systems, agitate the fabrics in the presence of a solvent such as perchlorethylene. The cleaning and an initial extraction operation are performed in a cleaning unit. The solvent-laden fabrics are then transferred by hand, using a wheeled basket, to a solvent recovery unit which recovers the solvent from the fabrics by tumbling the fabrics in the presence of heat. The problem with such a system is that, during the transfer of the solvent-laden articles from the cleaning machine to the reclaiming machine, solvent evaporates from the fabrics, exposing the workers in the cleaning plant to the solvent fumes.
It is known to avoid such difficulty by providing a single dry-cleaning unit that performs both the cleaning function and the reclaiming function in a single treatment chamber. This combination unit avoids the necessity of removing solvent-laden articles from the treatment chamber. The problem with such units is that the reclaiming, or drying, function may take four or five times as long to perform as the cleaning function, thus, resulting in a low through-put of such combination machines. Furthermore, by combining two incompatible functions, such combination units are exceptionally expensive to produce and prone to difficulties in the field.
Therefore, the need exists for a system that utilizes the conventional separate cleaning and reclaiming units while substantially reducing the solvent evaporation during the article transfer step.